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It is suggested that perverted functioning is one of those aspects of the diseased ego which, besides its possible weakness or the faulty discharge of its tasks, presents the self with one of the most pernicious 'full tilts' towards self-destruction. Perverted functioning of the ego is closely linked with its premature development, especially if it takes the form of intellectual precocity. This, paradoxically, brings, during latency, intellectual deterioration ('stupidity') in its wake, with the fading away of (unsatisfied) sexual curiosity. Mythological proof is adduced to show how perverted intellectuality, to which little psychoanalytic attention has been given hitherto, was, on the contrary, given full interest and appraisal by folklore. Special mention is made of 'Ratatösk', its symbol in ancient Teutonic mythology, as one of the 'trickster-messengers' of the gods (with parallel figures in the Greek and other mythologies) who have an important, however ominous, role to fulfil. The catastrophic outcome of their taking over, which would finally end in individual schizophrenia, is, symbolically, expressed in the same myth as the 'twilight of the gods', brought about (at least partially) by Ratatösk, in the finally ensuing world conflagration: the catastrophic destruction of the ego and the intellect.